New security team's pluses, minuses

Most of the officials President Barack Obama announced Thursday as his latest nominees for top national-security posts are heavy hitters likely to sail through confirmation in the Senate.

By tapping veteran Washington hand and CIA Director Leon Panetta to head the Defense Department and signing up widely respected Gen. David Petraeus to run the Central Intelligence Agency, Obama is making a series of safe, no-drama choices to ride out the remainder of his first term.

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Obama also named former U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, and Deputy Centcom commander Lt. Gen. John Allen to replace Petraeus as U.S. commander in Afghanistan.

However, even the most esteemed nominees come with some drawbacks. Here’s a look at what each of the “new” appointees brings to Obama — and the potential downsides:

Leon Panetta, nominee for Secretary of Defense, to replace Robert Gates

What he brings Obama:

Panetta’s impressive resume, including stints as a congressman, House Budget Committee chairman, director of the Office of Management and Budget, White House chief of staff and CIA director, make him an obvious choice to manage the new round of budget cuts that Obama recently decided to impose on the Pentagon as part of his debt-reduction plan.

Explaining the nominations to reporters Wednesday, a senior administration official noted the planned security-related cuts of $400 billion over 12 years.

“Director Panetta’s experience as a manager and a manager of very large budgets, someone who is familiar with large organizations and has the ability to lead those organizations and implement strategy in those organizations, is a real strength that he brings here,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“Gates is a very hard guy to replace because of his breadth of experience,” said former CIA deputy director John McLaughlin. “Panetta could be kind of in Gates’s league. … Gates never served in Congress. Leon did. Gates never ran OMB. Leon did. I think Leon has the same wise man quality to him.”

Panetta also was Gates’s choice for a successor, said a Gates aide, who added that the defense secretary recommended Panetta to Obama about six months ago.

The downside:

Some see Panetta as a caretaker whose track record suggests he’s unlikely to bring transformative change to the military.

“For the people who remember the Vietnam era, the appointment will seem like a Clark Clifford redux,” Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute think tank said of the Johnson-era defense secretary. “Obama needs somebody to replace Gates until the end of his first term, and Panetta is a safe choice. Everybody will like him. Part of the reason why is he’s not going to shake up the status quo.”

Without significant changes, budget cuts might be implemented in an across-the-board fashion, which Gates has warned would hollow out the military.

While Panetta gets generally good marks for his leadership of the CIA, the task of running the Pentagon is far more complex — especially when the pork-barrel politics related to defense spending are taken into account.

Members of Congress, even prominent Republicans, hailed Panetta’s nomination, but some defense experts think his ability to persuade GOP lawmakers to accept painful cuts could be exaggerated. “If you want to cut the defense budget, the technical accounting side is in some ways simpler than the political side,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution. “I don’t think Panetta buys you that much by way of the politics of cutting the defense budget. … There are a lot of people I can think of — Lindsey Graham, Joe Lieberman … Jack Reed — who would have more credibility on assuring hawks that cuts are being done carefully.”